Balthasar Bickel

List of John Benjamins publications for which Balthasar Bickel plays a role.

Book series

Titles

Argument Selectors: A new perspective on grammatical relations

Edited by Alena Witzlack-Makarevich and Balthasar Bickel

[Typological Studies in Language, 123] 2019. vi, 536 pp.
Subjects Semantics | Syntax | Theoretical linguistics | Typology

Language Typology and Historical Contingency: In honor of Johanna Nichols

Edited by Balthasar Bickel, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson and Alan Timberlake

[Typological Studies in Language, 104] 2013. viii, 512 pp.
Subjects Historical linguistics | Theoretical linguistics | Typology
Jing, Yingqi, Paul Widmer and Balthasar Bickel 2023 Word order evolves at similar rates in main and subordinate clauses: Corpus-based evidence from Indo-EuropeanDiachronica 40:4, pp. 532–556 | Article
In syntactic change, it remains an open issue whether word orders are more conservative or innovative in subordinate clauses compared with main clauses. Using 47 dependency-annotated corpora and Bayesian phylogenetic inference, we explore the evolution of S/V, V/O, and S/O orders across main and… read more
Widmer, Manuel, Mathias Jenny, Wolfgang Behr and Balthasar Bickel 2021 Morphological structure can escape reduction effects from mass admixture of second language speakers: Evidence from Sino-TibetanStudies in Language 45:4, pp. 707–752 | Article
Morphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language speakers. While this has been chiefly shown for morphological richness, an unresolved question is whether the effect extends to aspects of morphological boundedness. Here we report a case study of… read more
Bickel, Balthasar, Taras Zakharko, Lennart Bierkandt and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich 2016 Semantic role clustering: An empirical assessment of semantic role types in non-default case assignmentAdvances in Research on Semantic Roles, Kittilä, Seppo and Fernando Zúñiga (eds.), pp. 51–78 | Article
This chapter seeks to determine to what extent there is cross-linguistic evidence for postulating clusters of predicate-specific semantic roles such as experiencer, cognizer, possessor, etc. For this, we survey non-default case assignments in a sample of 141 languages and annotate the associated… read more
Bickel, Balthasar, Taras Zakharko, Lennart Bierkandt and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich 2014 Semantic role clustering: An empirical assessment of semantic role types in non-default case assignmentAdvances in research on semantic roles, Kittilä, Seppo and Fernando Zúñiga (eds.), pp. 485–511 | Article
This paper seeks to determine to what extent there is cross-linguistic evidence for postulating clusters of predicate-specific semantic roles such as experiencer, cognizer, possessor, etc. For this, we survey non-default case assignments in a sample of 141 languages and annotate the associated… read more
Bickel, Balthasar 2013 Distributional biases in language familiesLanguage Typology and Historical Contingency: In honor of Johanna Nichols, Bickel, Balthasar, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson and Alan Timberlake (eds.), pp. 415–444 | Article
This paper introduces a method (the Family Bias Method) that estimates statistical biases in diachronic developments on the basis of synchronic samples. Estimates of developments are sought from their expected synchronic results: if a structure S outnumbers non-S significantly in a family, a change… read more
Stoll, Sabine and Balthasar Bickel 2013 The acquisition of ergative case in ChintangThe Acquisition of Ergativity, Bavin, Edith L. and Sabine Stoll (eds.), pp. 183–208 | Article
The acquisition of ergative marking in Chintang (Sino-Tibetan, Nepal) seems challenging: the marker covers several functions but is rare in discourse because of NP ellipsis and syntactic constraints. Based on a longitudinal corpus of four children, we find that children master the ergative only… read more
Stoll, Sabine and Balthasar Bickel 2013 Capturing diversity in language acquisition researchLanguage Typology and Historical Contingency: In honor of Johanna Nichols, Bickel, Balthasar, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson and Alan Timberlake (eds.), pp. 195–216 | Article
In order to understand how children cope with the enormous variation in structures worldwide, developmental paths need to be studied in a sufficiently varied sample of languages. Because each study requires very large and expensive longitudinal corpora (about one million words, five to seven years… read more
Cross-linguistic variation in adjoined clause linkage is higher than what is allowed by universal concepts like ‘coordination’ or ‘subordination’ which entail sets of strictly correlated properties. This chapters uses statistical techniques to uncover probabilistic correlations and clusters in a… read more
Bickel, Balthasar 2008 On the scope of the referential hierarchy in the typology of grammatical relationsCase and Grammatical Relations: Studies in honor of Bernard Comrie, Corbett, Greville G. and Michael Noonan (eds.), pp. 191–210 | Article
Split alignment in case-marking has often been hypothesized to be affected by the referential hierarchy in that higher-ranking arguments are more likely to be accusatively aligned while lower-ranking arguments are more likely to be ergatively aligned. A survey of typological databases suggests that… read more
Bickel, Balthasar and Johanna Nichols 2005 Inclusive-exclusive as person vs. number categories worldwideClusivity: Typology and case studies of the inclusive–exclusive distinction, Filimonova, Elena (ed.), pp. 49–72 | Chapter
Bickel, Balthasar 2004 4. The syntax of experiencers in the HimalayasNon-nominative Subjects: Volume 1, Bhaskararao, Peri and Karumuri V. Subbarao (eds.), pp. 77–112 | Chapter
Bickel, Balthasar 2000 On the syntax of agreement in Tibeto-BurmanStudies in Language 24:3, pp. 583–610 | Article
Verb agreement in Tibeto-Burman languages follows a different principle than in other, especially Indo-European languages. Instead of limiting agreement to the unification of features of the agreement trigger with those of the target, Tibeto-Burman languages also allow NP features to combine with… read more
Bickel, Balthasar 2000 Grammar and social practice: On the role of ‘culture’ in linguistic relativityEvidence for Linguistic Relativity, Niemeier, Susanne and René Dirven † (eds.), pp. 161–192 | Article
In the Belhare (Tibeto-Burman) verb, morphotactics and allomorphy, but not morpheme semantics, are sensitive to a distinction between direct (1>2, 1>3, 2>3, 3SG>3) and inverse (3NS>3, 3>2, 3>1, 2>1) participant configurations. Comparison of this phenomenon with Cree (Algonquian) and rGya-ro… read more